The United States has long declared its goal to maintain a “status quo” that avoids an official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, discourages Taiwan from declaring independence, and as a result, effectively equates to there being no outbreak in hostilities. Washington’s ad nauseam recitation of U.S. support for the “status quo” — defined as the existing state of affairs — is, however, increasingly disconnected from both the reality of China as the “most powerful adversary the United States has faced in living memory” and Taiwan’s maturation as a vibrant democracy. The “status quo” concept accurately represents language in U.S. policy, but it does not address the gray zone tactics used by Beijing toward Taiwan that could allow Beijing to accomplish its political objectives toward Taipei without crossing perceived U.S. redlines. It is time to realign U.S. policy toward something that better reflects this challenge. And while Washington’s policy framework has been and — by all indications will remain — a popular and bipartisan one, the framework itself was conceived over four decades ago in a dramatically different geostrategic environment. With only 25 years to go until China’s 2049 target of national rejuvenation — and five U.S. presidential elections in the interim — Washington cannot afford to wait in adjusting its approach and sharpening current policy rhetoric.
U.S. Policy Toward Taiwan in Context
The origins of the current U.S. approach to Taiwan policy can be traced to several historical inflection points, one of which was enunciated by Richard Nixon in a 1967 Foreign Affairs article, “Asia After Vietnam,” immediately prior to his second run for the presidency. Recognizing the deepening U.S. involvement in Asia after three wars, Nixon understood the need for a strategic recalibration. He realized that an exit from Vietnam was necessary, as was an approach that would prevent the U.S. from entanglement in future Asian conflicts while still enabling Washington to compete with the Soviet Union. In this context, his proposed approach to China was an especially clear-eyed one: He recognized China as an adversary and a nuclear-armed, revisionist power that posed a “present and potential danger” and required “measures designed to meet that danger.” But he also realized that America’s near-term challenge was less likely to come from China, but rather from the Soviet Union.
Nixon outlined in his article the strategy he would go on to pursue as president: a strategic shift in the overall U.S. approach to Asia driven by rapprochement with China that avoided a nuclear war, defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War, prevented the spread of communism and fostered economic prosperity in Asia, and maintained U.S. dominance across the region. A new era began when Nixon stepped into office and found partners willing to engage the United States in both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. As the troves of official historical records from the time make clear, both sides came to the table willing to negotiate on common interests. Ultimately, this was a trade-off that aligned with what Nixon had defined as U.S. interests: Good relations with Beijing were key to preventing future regional entanglement, managing competition with the Soviet Union, and supporting an exit strategy out of Vietnam. It was only on the issue of Taiwan that both sides agreed to disagree, instead, as the United States described it, “acknowledging” the position of the other government but not definitively taking a stance toward resolution. This nuance ultimately helped to pave the path for Washington to diplomatically recognize Beijing under President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
The U.S. policy approach to Taiwan began to crystallize as rapprochement transitioned to formal recognition of Beijing. Today, what’s known as America’s “one China” policy is usually described by U.S. officials as derived from a series of defining legal and policy documents: the Taiwan Relations Act (1979); the three U.S.–China joint communiques (1972, 1979, and 1982); and the Six Assurances (1982). Occasionally, officials will go on to emphasize a few additional principles, including an abiding interest in the peaceful resolution of differences, opposition to unilateral changes to the status quo, non-support for Taiwan independence, and a preference for continuing dialogue between all sides. As Brookings scholar Richard Bush has noted, some of these policy documents are more important for Beijing than Taipei (and vice versa) — but, in our view, all of them matter for how the U.S. competes with China and evolves its support for Taiwan’s self-defense in a manner commensurate with the threat environment.
Cementing the “Status Quo”
Fast forward to present-day, and U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains one of the few truly consistent and bipartisan issues in Washington. While such policy continuity may offer external assurances of stability, whether to Chinese policymakers watching every word and tweet from Zhongnanhai or to like-minded American allies and partners, there is a growing risk that the United States is allowing historic formulations rather than updated geostrategic realities to drive Washington’s approach to Taiwan. In other words, there are risks in continuing to employ the policy framework first defined by Nixon — who sought to manage the realities of a very different China — as the ruler against which U.S. policy toward Taiwan and the rest of Asia is measured.
What we believe to be especially detrimental for advancing long-term U.S. strategic interests in the region is a seemingly laser-focus by U.S. officials in publicly affirming to “uphold the status quo.” Whereas much of the U.S. policy framework for Taiwan can be defined or interpreted from Washington’s “one China” policy documents, any clarity on what the “status quo” entails — or, better still, whose “status quo” is the version to define all others — is left for interpretation. In the absence of an explicit or legally binding definition, the concept has instead evolved largely in the eye of the beholder. While the “status quo” may be more colloquially defined as “the existing state of affairs” when it comes to the Taiwan Strait, the term has become a catch-all phrase for encouraging all sides to avoid war.
None of these conceptualizations come near to the “status quo” that Nixon sought to preserve when fleshing out his Asia strategy. The “status quo” he defined for Washington was one that, at the time, consisted of far more military parity between China and Taiwan, no “new normal” of the Chinese military operating around Taiwan, and an implicit optimism that China would be dissuaded by the costs of conflict from pursuing further coercive behaviors toward Taipei.
We’ve seen in the intervening decades the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise and global ambitions of China, and Taiwan’s transformation into a flourishing democracy and crucial hub for global trade and innovation. Today’s “status quo” is likely one that the drafters of the foundational “one China” policy documents would not recognize. It is characterized by an increasingly heavy-handed Beijing — demonstrating repeatedly within its neighborhood and beyond a high tolerance for criticism in pursuit of its political objectives and territorial claims. This “status quo” is also taking a toll on Taiwan, with Beijing leveraging military and socioeconomic coercion to gradually chip away at the political psyche and preparedness of Taiwan in an attempt to co-opt the long-sought goal of unification.
Today’s “status quo” simply no longer serves U.S. interests in applying an archaic framing of China to ambiguity in how Washington describes the steps it is taking to deter conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Washington’s persistent defense of the “status quo” may mean the United States is able to avoid the outbreak of hostilities, but in doing so this rhetoric renders the U.S. posture a defensive one. The United States is perpetually left to respond to challenges from China — such as record-breaking air incursions and the “Joint Sword” exercises — in an effort to preserve a “status quo” that avoids escalation into war and preserves the agreements upon which formal bilateral ties were once negotiated. For Taiwan, advocacy of the “status quo” risks obscuring the urgency of the threat the island faces; it translates into the absence of war, but in doing so normalizes China’s gray zone coercive actions toward the island.
Washington is Overdue for a Policy Review
While some may argue for the United States clarifying its position for Taiwan and against China in a conflict, we’re not arguing for “strategic clarity.” Indeed, absent a formal defense treaty, any decision to take sides in a conflict will most certainly be ambiguous. Nor are we advocating that the foundational “one China” policy documents should be thrown out the window; the “one China” policy documents were masterfully written and the language was left purposefully ambiguous to allow current and future policymakers the room to make adjustments that reflected geostrategic realities. Interpretations of the foundational policy documents by officials must necessarily be reviewed — both formally and informally — whenever a major change in conditions occurs. In this case, we believe that Washington is overdue for a comprehensive, formal policy review of its approach to Taiwan that accurately reflects updated threat assessments, China’s political goals, the evolution of Taiwan’s democracy, and the full spectrum of U.S. government actions — alongside those of Washington’s regional allies and partners — to advance U.S. interests across the Indo-Pacific. This process need not be public; indeed, we believe it will likely be more effective and avoid any reaction from China if carried out behind closed doors.
There have been informal and ad hoc reviews of U.S. policy toward Taiwan across administrations, but the only formal and publicly documented review dates to the Clinton era. (Congressional calls for another review as recently as 2014 do not appear to have yielded fruit.) The Clinton-era review was led by the Department of State and sought to reconcile how the U.S. government implemented the Taiwan Relations Act (1979); by accounts conveyed to the authors from those witting of the process at the time, it’s understood that the policy review ran in parallel to the development of Executive Order 13014 to delegate the authorities of the Taiwan Relations Act (1979) from the president to the secretary of state. While businesspeople and Congress were involved in the review, strikingly absent from any public documentation of the effort was the inclusion of the departments with whom Taiwan policy today has matured significantly: the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Trade Representative. Both agencies today represent critical pillars of the U.S.–Taiwan relationship, whether through the sustained provision of defensive arms and services or in the expanding volume of trade on both sides of the Pacific.
For the incoming Trump administration, the combination of China’s continued aggression and the natural maturation of U.S.–Taiwan relations presents a unique opportunity to update and more fully leverage the flexibilities inherently contained in the current policy framework. Only through a deliberate and interagency policy review process will Washington be able to evolve its approach, not only to ensure alignment on the strategic importance of whole-of-government actions on China and Taiwan, but also to scope further how the interagency process can more actively pursue these critical actions within the boundaries of the current policy framework.
Lauren Dickey, PhD is a non-resident senior associate for the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From January 2020 to March 2024, she served as senior advisor and acting director for Taiwan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Matthew Kent is a U.S. Army officer currently serving as associate dean in the College of Security Studies at Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. He joined the College of Security Studies faculty in September 2022 following a three-year tour as chief of the Liaison Affairs Section at the American Institute in Taiwan-Taipei.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not represent the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.
Image: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Scott Taylor via Wikimedia Commons
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